I check about six times a day for a new post from her. Should she go three days without posting, I am ready to write and see if she is okay or not? I am stalking addicted.

I have even developed a ritual for her posts. I savor read it to myself first, then I read it outloud to husband, while trying not to laugh so hard I fall off my chair, then I post it to facebook. Then, I get to read all the neat comments I get from my daughter and others who also find her hysterical.

Now if my mind just worked that way, maybe I would post more regularly.

Every time my mother has felt ill, she has reminded me that she has written her obituary and it is in the computer.

The woman has had two strokes, two TIA’s, breast cancer, and a total of 24 surgeries or procedures in her 89 1/2 years of life. She has about everything wrong with her heart that can be and the 24th procedure was this month. So, you can well imagine that I have kept that thought in my mind: “My obituary is in the computer.”

We thought she was having a third heart attack for the month and took her into the emergency room in intense pain. Luckily, and I say this with all my heart, she got a good physician (this time) in the ER. Last time she was in (this month) she was in for six hours and had a second chest x-ray after three hours because they just realized it was blurry. This doc knew right away that he was not dealing with a heart attack and ordered an MRI on her abdomen.

They found a larger gall stone had fallen into a duct and was blocking the area between her liver and intestines. Her liver was enlarged. She was in immense pain and in an ambulance some 50 miles to Indiana University Medical Center.

We have spent most of our time since at Indiana Medical Center and found it to be the best, ABSOLUTE BEST, bunch of nurses, student nurses, doctors, interns, cleaning staff, people on earth. The one ‘poor quality’ nurse really stood out after seeing so many who rushed in to help her to the bathroom just because they heard her tell us she was going to need to go soon. She rarely had to push a button.

We were told that she had two options and neither was good. If they did not do surgery she would die and if they did surgery, there was a 70% chance she would die. That night, when I went back to her apartment to pick up some things for her, I turned on the computer and looked for her obituary. I had already grabbed the name of the mortuary.

There was NO OBITUARY. What there was, was a read-only file called obituary. I did not tell mom that this document, that I presumed she had worked on so hard, was blank.

Ten days, a PIC line (which is a line they put in after no one can bear to stick her again since her blood clots in the needles anymore), and a procedure later, she was recovering and I got up the nerve to tell her about the missing file. Her response:

Conversation with mother (age 89) yesterday, after she had a heart attack in the morning and fell in the evening and was doped up on painkillers.

Setting: Her apartment. I’m trying to get her tucked into bed.

MOM: You need to move that fan.

ME: You want it closer?

MOM: and close that window.

ME: You love the evening breeze on you. It’s not going to rain so why not just enjoy the open window?

MOM: Because you are going to yell at me about the stuff.

ME: “What stuff?”

MOM: You know, the wet stuff.

ME: (pause) Not really sure I know what wet stuff you are talking about; let alone when have I yelled at you.

MOM: It gets damp and you yell at me because I’m not turning on the air-conditioner.

ME: OHHHH! When it is 98 degrees out, at 2pm, and really humid and you are sitting in your apartment panting, and having trouble breathing, because of your COPD, yes, I want you to close the window and turn on the air-conditioning. But, it’s night out now and dry and there’s this nice cool breeze. So, why not enjoy it? You love sleeping with the windows open.

MOM: Okay!

By this time, she is almost in bed.

Two seconds later, as she has all of her medicines and her cold water to drink.

MOM: You need to move that fan.

ME: (foolishly thinking this issue was settled) Why do you want the fan moved.

MOM: Because you are going to yell at me about the water.

ME: If you are talking about the humidity, I only worry about it when you are having trouble breathing during the day. But, it’s a nice cool night and you like the window open.

Husband has a faulty electrical energy field. Watches break within minutes of him wearing them, answering machines stop working, clocks run backward. There is no end to the mayhem that is my husband.

Once, he went to pick up a brand new refrigerator and by the time he got it home, the only side that was not scratched, dented or banged was the BACK! THE BACK! For crying out loud, couldn’t he have let me have one side???

So, when he was finally given a cell phone (he was the last to receive one in the family and we were all in trepidation over the gravity of giving him a cell phone), we all held our breath to see what would happen.

It didn’t take long for the phone to fight back. It repeatedly talks to him when he pulls it out of his pocket to see what time it is. (Since he cannot wear a watch.)

PHONE: “Do a command.”

Husband fumbles with buttons.

PHONE: “DO A COMMAND!”

Husband opens and closes lid.

PHONE: “LIKE, Call home!”

Okay, his phone is obviously “like, a valley girl.”

Husband begins pushing buttons.

PHONE: “Calling Home.”

Me: “Hi. Whatcha’ want?”

Husband: “I wanted to know what time it was.”

Me: Pause. “Ah, if you open the lid of your phone you will see what time it is.”

My humor is of the more dry kind. Someone is having a conversation and I pop in with a blatently obvious observation that no one else will dare to say.

Okay, example: I graduated from the School of the (Museum) of the Art Institute of Chicago. You study all forms of art, 2-D, 3-D, 4-D, etc. We had attended a show of some performance art, where a young man is naked in a cage and trying to pleasure himself. (It is the Art Institute); lots of naked, lots of angst. The class was discussing the ‘purpose’ of the performance and what we learned from it. I, one of the older students, opens my mouth and out pops, “That it’s harder to come in public than you think.”

To me, it was just one of those rules of nature that everyone should know, but the class spent the next five minutes ROFLOL. (See, I’m not as old as you think.)

Often, when I say these things, I don’t even realize it’s going to be funny. This makes it hard for me to write humor. I’ve had a lot of ‘things’ going on in the last year; ill health of family members, ill health of pets, the financial situation, idiots, etc. Not a lot seems funny to me and I have made a point of going back through my book and MAKING some funny.

I know a person. I’ve known her all my life. I have always thought she was a loving and fun loving, a kind person with a big heart. She welcomes almost all friends to her door. She has always been a bit bigoted.

She began emailing my neighbor, years ago before Facebook and all the networking sites started up. By e-mail she became a long lost friend to my neighbor. And, she was. She would have done anything for my neighbor. She used to be a friend to all.

I don’t know what has happened to her over the years, nor how her heart has filled with so much hatred.

Lately, she has taken to forwarding political apps on Facebook. They are the cruelest, most illogical, often bigoted, bits of hatred you can find. They are pictures reminiscent of the old time Little Black Sambo era, where watermelon was a code for race and excuse for hatred.

She is a flag-waving American and proud of it. She is proud of this country and all that created it. I guess that even includes “All men are created equal,” but I’m not sure she remembers that part. She is also a Christian, and yet she seems to have forgotten the “Do unto others as you would have them do until you.” Right now, she just spouts hate.

I did not realize how much seeing it was affecting me every day, until someone else I knew mentioned they had blocked or removed her because they were tired of it.

Today, I blocked this “dear” person. I don’t mean to abandon her, if she is slipping. I don’t mean to offend her. I just cannot take it anymore and today, when I checked my Facebook and all that was on was teenagers writing poems and pictures of little children from relatives, not someone using the word Stupider to show how bright Sarah Palin is, I was happy again. I no longer had to see her spouting a belief that I will never agree with, no matter how much she tries to cram it down my throat.

You cannot force someone else to believe in your religion by sending four apps a day of “the daily picture of Jesus” or whatever else they have, and you cannot change their politics by belittling the political leaders that they believe in. It is insulting and only stirs up bile. If you wish to blog your beliefs, that is fine. I can choose to read or not read your blog. But, there should be different rules on a site like Facebook. There should be a rule for being civil and not cruel. There should be respect for other people’s beliefs, without trying to cram your own down their throat.

69.8 million families, in this United States, live on Social Security and/or Federal Pension. Those checks cover anywhere from one to —— people/adults and children in a family.

IF OUR government cannot get its act together, 69.8 million families will not get a check (and that includes the military) on the Third of August. What will happen????

1. First, no direct deposit or card to pay that money.

2. No deposit, EQUALS, no money to pay the mortgage, utilities, doctors, gasoline, car repairs, house repairs, food, school clothing, book rental. For one month, we will sit in our HOT homes (my husband has COPD and by the end of the month will most likely be in the hospital.) opening bank statement overdraft fees, and mortgage late payments, and, after the freezer is all melted, canned goods. Not to speak of the student loan that I could not cancel the automatic withdrawal on in time. That would certainly rank under the mortgage, if I could have.

3. The end of the month will see us walking three miles away to have a free dinner at Mother’s Cupboard, well some of us. My husband could not walk that length even in 70 degree weather.

4. I will cancel the MRI for my possible crushed disc, in my back that is causing intense cyatic pain.

5. We will not order medicine that we run out of.

6. We already cancelled our land line but have a contract on the cell, so I guess they just turn it off without payment, but you still owe it.

7. What happens to your health and life insurance premiums? I think I have two months before I am in default and lose my health insurance.

8. Our income is already under $20,000 a year. We have a nineteen year old with one more semester of high school, long story, he wasn’t being homeschooled when we took him, so he had problems. One boy was just deployed to Afghanistan and one boy is working in food service and paying his own student loans and gas and food bills.

9. Just wanted to give you a taste of our world.

MY PROPOSAL:

Every single one of those families need to write to every Congressman, senator, tea party, republican and democrat and send them a bill for the actual and mental damages when this happens. Maybe that will wake them up. Do you know a good Class Action lawyer?